Submit Your Manuscript

The final judge’s decision will be made known in April or May 2025, and the news will be posted both at Waywiser-Press.com and WaywiserBooks.org at that time.

1. Entrants should be at least 18 years of age.
2. Entrants should not have published more than one full-length previous collection of poems, though they may have published an unlimited number of books belonging to other genres.
3. Individual poems from the collection may have been published in: (a) magazines, journals, or anthologies; (b) chapbooks and pamphlets of 36 pages or less (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter); (c) self-published items of 32 pages or less (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter).
4. Nobody who has a book published by or forthcoming from Waywiser may enter.
5. Close friends, colleagues, and former students of the judge should not submit to this year’s contest.
6. Manuscripts should be in English, and the original work of the entrant, though as much as one sixth of the manuscript may consist of public domain translations (i.e. translations from poems whose authors have been dead for 70+ years).
7. Entrants who reach the semi-finals of the contest should be able to send Waywiser a hard copy of their manuscript, and this copy, stripped of anything that would identify the author, should otherwise correspond in every particular to the original.
8. Entrants must be willing to read from their collections in Washington D.C. in the spring of 2026, if they are chosen as the winner.

1. Manuscripts should be a minimum of 48 and a maximum of 88 pages (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter).
2. Manuscripts should be word-processed – preferably in 11-point type – on standard document size.
3. Pages should be numbered consecutively, and a table of contents, as well as a list of acknowledgements (where appropriate), should be included.
4. The author’s name and contact details (i.e. physical address, phone number and email address) should appear on the front page of the manuscript and nowhere else.
5. No illustrative material should be sent.
6. A list of previous poetry book, chapbook or pamphlet publications should be included, and with it a list of the magazines in which you have had poems published.
7. Entrants may submit a manuscript elsewhere simultaneously but should immediately notify Waywiser of its withdrawal from the competition if it is accepted for publication by another organization.
8. Once submitted, a manuscript may not be altered, though the winner of the prize will be given the opportunity to revise before publication.
9. Waywiser cannot accept responsibility for missing submissions.
10. If the judge is not satisfied that a high-enough standard has been met, Waywiser reserves the right not to award the prize in a particular year.

US $29, but you can pay this using most standard credit or debit cards (regardless of the issuing country) or using a PayPal account.

Manuscripts should be submitted by midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on December 1st 2024.

1. Only single file submissions can be accepted, so if your manuscript is stored in multiple files, they will need to be amalgamated before you upload.
2. We can only accept files in PDF format. If at the moment it is saved as a Word file, you can easily convert it by opening the file in Word, clicking on the FILE menu, clicking SAVE AS from the drop-down options, and then clicking on the PDF option (FILE ⮕ SAVE AS ⮕ PDF). Please do not lock the file you submit (i.e. make it impossible for us to print or cut and paste from it).
3. Please ensure that your file name corresponds to the title of your manuscript (with underscores replacing spaces). So, for example, if your manuscript were titled “The Waste Land”, it should be uploaded as The_Waste_Land.
4. You will need to have your credit or debit card or PayPal account details ready, since you will only be allowed to submit after the entry fee has been paid.
5. When you are ready to proceed with payment and upload of your manuscript, please click on the SUBMIT YOUR MANUSCRIPT button.
   (a) Then complete the submission form and either (b) click the ‘PayPal’ button or (c) click the ‘Debit or Credit Card’ button;
   (b) If you wish to pay using your PayPal account then click the ‘PayPal’ button and this will take you to PayPal’s payment portal and on payment you will be redirected back to upload your manuscript;
   (c) If you wish to pay using your Debit or Credit card then click the ‘Debit or Credit Card’ button and this will allow you to enter your details and on payment it will allow you to upload your manuscript
   (d) Once your payment has been made you will receive an emailed receipt, with a link which will explain how to upload your manuscript.
   Clicking the link will take you to the Hecht Prize submission portal Thank You page, which will give you your order reference number and provide you with a button to upload your manuscript;
   (e) Clicking the Upload File button will allow you to to select and upload your manuscript;
   (f) Once you have uploaded your manuscript, a dialogue box will open to tell you that the upload has been successful. However, if you have browser scripts turned off then the dialogue box may not be visible;
   (g) After successfully uploading your manuscript, you will be sent a second email, confirming its safe receipt.

If you do not receive the receipt for payment and/or the receipt of manuscript email, please first check your spam folder to be sure they aren’t there. If they aren’t there, please email us at info@waywiser-press.com, giving us your name, the title of your submission, and the order reference number.

1. If you wish to withdraw your manuscript for any reason, please click the ‘Withdraw Your Manuscript’ button below and complete the withdrawal form.
2. Please note that entry fees cannot be refunded. So please be sure you are uploading the correct file.

Please click the link to download a pdf version of the hechtprize20 Guidelines.

1. All financial transactions are processed by Paypal, on their own secure server, and your payment details are never seen by Waywiser.
2. When you submit a manuscript to the Hecht Prize, you are automatically subscribed to our prize newsletter. You can cease to receive the newsletter by clicking the UNSUBSCRIBE button at its foot.
3. Information about your submission, including your name, your contact details, the title of your manuscript, and the submission fee you paid, is held by Waywiser for the five years required by UK tax authorities.
4. Submitted manuscripts will be deleted from our database within one month of the relevant contest’s closure.